MANNEQUINS UP IN ARMS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 January 1939, Page 3

MANNEQUINS UP IN ARMS

UNION FORMED IN LONDON. In the Mayfair dress salons and the big London stores sharp on 5.45 one night a month ago, 150 mannequins reached for their hats and coats and hurried off to hold the first general meeting of their newly-formed trade union. Elegant in silver fox capes and evei'y example of the quaint little hats of the moment they crowded into a private room at Verrey’s Restaurant, Regent Street. A black list of cut-price employers, a stabilised wage scale, and insurance against illness were the chief objects planned. Miss Karel Savoury made an appeal for a colleague. Anne Beeken, who will have to spend six months in a sanatorium. Her colleagues subscribed nearly £lO lor her.

Several, members spoke about their “too-precarious profession." "Asta." an Austrian-born, naturalised English model, said: "Pin-money models are our worst enemies—society girls who take jobs for ’fun.' They must go." Said ‘•Gloria,’’ mannequin for twelve years: "We have been nobody's children for too long. We've had no protection from bad employers, no one to back us in disputes."